The Dying Grass, page 69
and Wild Oat Moss, a warrior with many Salish relatives,
after whom ride White Bird’s People,
Swan Necklace and Strong Eagle adventuring off the trail; now they are draining the blood from a deer they have just shot; their women will be pleased;
while Shore Crossing rides steadily with that heavy-barrelled buffalo rifle over his shoulder,
then Star Doctor, Húsishúsis Kute, Chief Hahtalekin and the other Palouses,
and Ollokot now leads our young men out of camp
as Springtime, Fair Land, Good Woman, Sound Of Running Feet, Cloudburst and Welweyas the half-woman
(whose dearest love is helping other women)
finish packing their horses;
and Welweyas’s mother Agate Woman returns to the meadow with her camas hook, hoping to receive a certain secret root from her WYAKIN
even as Heinmot Tooyalakekt goes down to a private place by the river, hearing the horses say: Hinimí
(farther and farther away)
and watching as Good Woman spreads her thighs, beginning to wade across the river squatwise and rapidly, her bare feet as tough as her moccasins on the sharp rocks; and instead of shadow she casts a pool of coldly burning white sunlight around her at every step, as if when she weighs down the water she is squeezing light out of it; and when she stops, turning back to gaze at him, wriggling braids of light hang from her heels, seeming ready to swim away downstream at any instant; and then, gazing down at the water, she returns to him in careful slowness, bearing the light with her as she goes. Squatting lower, with her silver-threaded black braids now grazing the water, she makes urine. She smiles up at him. The black bangs slant across her oval face, and she wears shell-disk earrings saved from Cut Arm. Then she wades back to a deeper place, never slipping on the furry green algae, squats low again as if to make more urine, and suddenly catches a trout.
8
Riding south through the Bitter Root Valley,
our horse-wealth even now as thick and roiling and luminous as midges over a brown river on a late summer morning
(that stingy old Burning Coals owns more stallions than anyone),
the People allow themselves to be led by Looking-Glass,
who believes that his life is still following the steady water-glide of a grebe with its bill aimed straight forward;
camas now long out of flower,
Springtime missing Brown One, her favorite horse, whom Cut Arm stole after the fight at Big Water;
Good Woman seeks late bitterroots for Springtime (they are good for breast milk); perhaps the Salish women in Charlot’s country will help her;
and wherever we go, the Bostons shyly hide, which pleases our hearts.
White Thunder, who grew up hunting buffalo, begins to feel like singing—for soon we shall be riding and hunting forever!
But Heinmot Tooyalakekt feels sorrow: in our home the longtailed wild ginger’s leaves must have begun to wilt just now.
Stopping at the Berry-Picking Place which the Salish once showed us, Swan Woman, Cloudburst, Kate and Good Woman pick six baskets of huckleberries
(laughing at the Salish,
who never pound meat together with berries)
as Springtime and Fair Land hang up their cradleboards from an aspen tree and pick huckleberries together
(as naughty Cloudburst, seizing her chance, runs to tease Ollokot, whispering in his ear: My darling husband, will you tell me that I am your loveliest one?
—Enough! Now be silent),
while Shore Crossing shoots a golden eagle from a tree, then gives away the feathers to his friends;
then we ride on,
dipping our buffalo horns into the creek as we go.
White Bird is saying: Let them now decorate their faces for Charlot’s People
(if we are good to them then they should give us good presents),
and Looking-Glass is painting himself red and yellow.
Heinmot Tooyalakekt, his heart rising into joy, begins gazing at his beautiful younger wife:
longing to play again with her butterfly,* whose pale pinkness reminds him of buffaloberries picked from the stalk not long since,
and she turns around in the saddle, understands his eyes, flushes, looks away and then back again, smiling now
(in the cradleboard their baby stares at TRAVELLER THE
SUN),
then says: Husband, make your heart happy! All is now straight!
Indeed Looking-Glass has done well.
I cannot contradict you, since we go to the Buffalo Country, where Bostons are few and we shall always have meat. Is that not so?
Síikstiwaa, he answers, even now I would give my own life to undo what the young men have done.
9
First they ride into Charlot’s camp across the river from the town of Stevensville,
tipis secluding themselves on the meadow which has decorated itself with the pallid orange seedheads, almost like miniature cattails, of Oregon grape,
and there are already so many silver-purple berries which the children are hoping to pick, but first we must smoke a pipe with the Salish
because White Bird is hoping to meet his dear uncle, Eagle of the Light, who remains chief of eleven lodges in this place
(once he lived with us at Sparse-Snowed Place, but the Bostons kept ruining us with getting-drunk liquid, so he rode away exactly here;
nowadays they are tormenting him again, because he refuses to go onto painted land),
while Looking-Glass means to take counsel of Charlot,
who, however, tells him: Why shall I shake hands with men whose hands are stained with blood? My hands are clean!
—Rainbow hoping nonetheless to please the Salish maidens who enchant him with the wavy beadwork on their buckskin dresses
(they have perfumed themselves with balsam needles)
as Good Woman trades some jerked Boston beef for a good wooden-handled berry pounder to give to Fair Land,
who lost hers in Red Owl’s country (Cut Arm devoured it);
and Charlot, with whom our best men have fought against the Shinbones, rides round and round in a Boston’s stovepipe hat, proudly wearing the military cloak and striped belly-sash that Governor Stevens gave out twenty-two years ago, for the treaty before the thief treaty:
pulling his hat low over his eyes, he frowns at Looking-Glass
even as Lone Bird, one of our bravest young men, rides around calling out: We should keep riding, riding fast! Death may now be following on our trail,
although Grizzly Bear Youth, whose WYAKIN is the AIR BIRD, has Dreamed of nothing evil;
then Charlot says: Hear me, my dear brothers, friends and relations! My heart is sad at this trouble you have brought upon yourselves. Now I must think upon the best way for my People and yours. The Bostons here will hunt you down like angry bears; between them and the Bostons where you came there is no difference; they are both Americans. Rest to-night, then hasten east. If you have no care for your own women and children, take pity on ours! The Bostons long to devour the last morsels of my country. If you stay in this place, they will say that we both conspire against them. Then we too shall lose our freedom.
Yes, says Toohhoolhoolsote, I well understand what your freedom is. Hear me, Charlot! You have lost your courage. I shall no more call you chief, for you have learned to live like a toothless old woman pounding meat which she cannot eat!
—at which Looking-Glass shouts: I who am head-chief dislike this talk! Charlot, I say to you what I said to the Bluecoats: We shall pass on to the Buffalo Country, with or without your friendship. Bid us welcome or not; it is all the same to me. Have you forgotten my deeds?
Not at all, Looking-Glass, I welcome you; may your hearts all be at peace; only I pray you not to stay too long . . .
so we settle in a circle:
Kate, not much listening to the chiefs, has spied ripe chokecherries, so she and Welweyas, Agate Woman and Cloudburst, Helping Another and old Towhee now gather them, laying them out to dry on elkhides before their lodges,
and the Salish women come to help
(Welweyas admires the smell of their hair),
giving them horsemint to crush up and sprinkle over the fruit so that no flies will land on it,
although many do land regardless,
as the Salish men sigh sadly over Burning Coals’s great herd of horses
(here it has proved impossible to keep so many).
Now some People go shopping in Stevensville,
although Charlot’s People stay quiet in their lodges, fearing that the Bostons will punish them after we have gone
—besides, they have ridden to Stevensville before—
and Fair Land will not go
(Cloudburst, who longs just to look, and maybe to obtain some lovely thing, locks her mouth, unwilling to go against her elder sister-wife);
Sound Of Running Feet, whose heart despises Bostons, keeps her baby sister with her in camp, so that her mothers may please their hearts in Stevensville;
although it should be confessed that even this obedient one, who has brass buttons, gold dust, needles and other treasures in a tiny flower-patterned beaded bag that her Aunt Fair Land made for her, would have liked to discover whatever newness she could—especially because in the Buffalo Country there may be no more Bostons forever, which was why she had quietly asked: Mother, may I ride in to buy Boston things?—to which Good Woman replied: My daughter, you have no sense! Stay here in camp and help. The Bostons sell nothing good! . . . and off she rode with Springtime to buy no-good things, leaving Sound Of Running Feet behind:
now she is asking Fair Land to tell again the tale of WATER WOMAN—the girl’s favorite story—as they sit together fanning flies off the drying chokecherries,
and for a moment Cloudburst turns away, resentfully opening and shutting the breastpin that Ollokot gave her)—
so we are riding up Main Street, our warriors well feathered and painted, with red flannel in their hair,
Looking-Glass first, like a proud bird outspreading his tail,
calling to his old Boston friends: Hear me, merchants! We need food, and we can pay. Open your doors, or we shall take without paying!
and the Bostons rush to unlock their shops,
which the People enter happily
(Looking-Glass truly knows how to speak to Bostons!):
our young women unwrapping five dollar bills from around their braids, happy to pay triple for hardbread and brown sugar,
Good Woman and Springtime keeping close together, with their husband nearby them
(his heart desires nothing here),
Wounded Head’s wife beside About Asleep’s mother, hoping for flour,
Looking-Glass’s wives and daughters knowing full well what to bargain for,
even as Arrowhead, she who always rides with a wolfskin over her shoulders, pays gold dust for a bottle of calomel
while Shore Crossing seeks cartridges for his great buffalo rifle
—he has begun dreaming of his own death—
but the merchant laughs and shakes his head; that gun was for great-grandfathers!
Espowyes, who is also called Thunder-Eyes, stands high in the stirrups on a horse tricked out with a yoke of stripes and triangles; he is wearing a war bonnet of eagle feathers, and as he now comes up Main Street he upraises a Cutthroat tomahawk, just to tease the Bostons;
following him rides Peopeo Tholekt on his longnecked yellow horse,
and then Old Yellow Wolf, Wottolen and Black Eagle, those three all leaping off their stallions together, and entering each retail establishment, just for awhile, until the Bostons lower their heads;
and Yellow Bull, who once killed certain Bostons in their homes back at the Chinook Salmon Water,
while Grey Eagle leads his daughter White Feather into the apothecary’s shop, where they look without buying anything;
and old Tzi-kal-tza, happy to see Bostons again, tells each merchant: Me Clark! although the merchants will not smile back;
Ollokot pays up-to-date greenbacks for bags of flour and coffee
(as usual, the Bostons mark up the prices),
then chooses new blankets for his wives;
and White Thunder comes riding up Main Street with one cartridge belt across the shoulder and the other around his waist:
He walks into a store and lays down a gold button from the dead Bluecoat officer at Sparse-Snowed Place. He points to a plug of tobacco and the scared bearded Boston lays it on the counter,
acrosss an opened spread of newspaper
(The Missoulian)
whose headline reads
(White Thunder cannot read it):
HELP! HELP! WHITE BIRD DEFIANT! COME RUNNING!
He points to an opened crate of Winchester cartridges. The Boston shakes his head;
but Shooting Thunder meets no trouble in purchasing a two-bladed screwdriver for a Springfield rifle (his), with an attached wrench for the mainspring;
and Welweyas the half-woman, wishing to get something fine for Sound Of Running Feet, is trying to sell a shield-shaped pin of silvered brass, with an eagle on top and Rutherford B. Hayes handsomely, pallidly ferrotyped within an oval window whose sash reads OUR CENTENNIAL PRESIDENT.
No, squaw. That ain’t money. No good.
No good?
Where’d you get this, anyway?
10
As for Toohhoolhoolsote,
whom we once appointed to speak for us before Cut Arm,
he declines to chaffer with Bostons,
being one who has ridden three times to P’na, where Smohalla’s tule lodge rises steep, narrow and unusually long—since that lucky man now has more than a dozen wives—not far from the rapids where the Sacred Island guards its rock-images, ready to drown all ignorant and impure; and within the lodge, our line of men now faces our line of women across the white sand of the dance floor as Smohalla rings the handbell; all this is good in Toohhoolhoolsote’s heart, because Smohalla will never sell OUR MOTHER, remaking Her into a dead tree gnawed by ants;
let others meet those Bostons if they wish,
the Bostons, who herd People and drive away animals everywhere.
11
A pair of Bostons sell getting-drunk liquid,
so that Looking-Glass and White Bird must whip three crazy braves out of town, to avoid annoying any Bostons
while Toohhoolhoolsote says to Rainbow: I know the true worth of Bostons’ talk;
then his warriors pillage a Boston’s house,
loving the cool darkness, where a long spiderweb tapers as it descends from the smokehouse ceiling until it becomes nearly ropelike,
playing with a tea set, a Bible and a birdcage,
cutting a harness to pieces,
then seizing bags of coffee and flour to feed their People
and also laying hands on a few horses;
but Looking-Glass, who always knows what to do,
makes them return the horses and even brand seven of their own horses with his brand;
because we must keep our treaty:
the Americans are our friends; it is only Cut Arm and his Bluecoats and Bostons who hate us in their hearts.
12
A whiskey-vending Boston comes to camp and sells them ammunition; they pay with a brown mare. Indeed the Americans are their friends.
13
Again Looking-Glass complains (not to White Bird, whose chief the man is, but to Heinmot Tooyalakekt, who will listen) that Shore Crossing keeps causing trouble among the Bostons.— The Wallowa chief replies: What was he to do? When the Bostons killed his father, we told him that he should have made himself brave. Now that he has taken revenge, we must not blame him.
His women take pleasure in the coffee and flour they have bought,
trading some with Salish women
(who dare not go to Stevensville)
for serviceberry cakes;
and Welweyas now wears a leather-sheathed Wilson skinning knife around her neck
(price: that goldpiece she gleaned from the battlefield at Sparse-Snowed Place).
Springtime feels happy-hearted in her new beargrass cap; she thanks her elder sister-wife. Now she has laid down fresh grass bedding; from a fine piece of deerskin she begins cutting out new moccasins for her husband,
whose hair is now being roached anew by Good Woman,
while the young men are shouting, laughing and showing their hands as they play the Stick Game
(the evening clouds as complex as the white fernlike intricacies of yarrow leaves),
as Sun Tied’s wife sits quiet under a cottonwood; her birth-pangs are almost coming,
and Lean Elk races horses with Ollokot, who loses three times;
White Thunder smokes the pipe with Old Yellow Wolf and Wottolen,
whose heart remains clear of any evil Dream,
and Sound Of Running Feet, standing before the striped blanket hung out to air on a branch beside her father’s lodge
(Good Woman has given her a green hair-ribbon from Stevensville:
to-night she will cherish it; perhaps to-morrow she will wear it),
watches the gambling, wondering how it would be to get gambled away to some handsome brave, for it is the time of life when a girl begins to Dream for herself.
We dance the Rabbit Dance with the Salish
(Burning Coals’s daughter keeps acting husband-hungry),
and then Heinmot Tooyalakekt rings the handbell while his long braids fall down his chest, barely swaying, at which Ollokot, Toohhoolhoolsote, Looking Glass and Hahtalekin commence to beat the drums, and so the People chant and dance with Charlot’s People, who like Left Hand’s People have forgotten much,
and Sound Of Running Feet suddenly begins to sing:
